


Reborn of Ice and Fire

by tielan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Civil War (Marvel), F/M, Gen, Maria Hill In Civil War, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 16:10:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4398578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time, Steve dies in ice. The second time, he dies in fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reborn of Ice and Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Another of my attempts to level with Maria's absence in Civil War. (A cameo is not a presence.) Not terribly elegant, I'm afraid. I mostly wanted the idea out.

The first time, Steve dies in ice.

The second time, it’s a fiery death.

 

* * *

 

He dreams of fire flaying his flesh from his bones, of heat searing the serum from his skeleton, everything that made him burned away – everything that made him _special_ – until there’s nothing left but ash…

 

_Climbing to his feet, his nose bloody, his bruises bruised over, but…climbing to his feet._

_Dirt on his side, bracing for the explosion, waiting to die…only he doesn’t. “Is this a test?”_

_Looking at the flagpole, thinking the sergeant never said **how** they should get the flag. _

_A finger tapping his chest before it falls, never to rise again._

 

* * *

 

He dreams of fire in the sky, of fragile flesh blown bloody by scattering shrapnel and burned black by igniting fuel.

 

_He sets the cup down before her._

“ _Coffee?” Then she frowns, sniffing the cup more carefully._

“ _And a bit more.” When her eyes narrow, he says, “You need the jolt. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”_

_She sips the doctored coffee, before her lashes drop. And then her only comment is, “You’re a bit big for a mother hen, Rogers.”_

“ _Well, if you didn’t act like a chick that needs looking after…”_

_The sight of Maria Hill, serious and sober Deputy Director of SHIELD, sticking out her tongue at him is unexpected. And warming – that she trusts him enough to be casual in his presence._

 

_He automatically reaches out a hand to touch her when she starts to climb out of bed, and the sudden tension beneath his palm says all the things he doesn’t want to hear, even before she says, quietly, “This was a bad idea.”_

_He drops his hand. “Was it me?”_

“ _No. It’s not—I’m not—” Maria exhales slowly. “I can’t do this, Steve. I’m sorry, I can’t.”_

_It stings a little – a little more than a little, actually – but he has his pride.  
_

_So he lets her go, and they're just good friends._

_Just._

 

_Natasha finds him out in the meditative garden, staring at the pond and the carp that bob up to the surface, hoping for food._

“ _They confirmed the explosives; it was an inside job. Someone wanted her dead.”_

“ _One of ours.” It rakes through his chest, betrayal gouging deeper into the gaping loss. “One of_ hers _.”_

“ _We’ll find them,” Natasha said, and it’s a deadly promise when made by the Black Widow._

_But all Steve can think is that it’s not enough – that it might be justice, but it won’t bring her back._

 

* * *

 

He dreams of fire in his chest, outrage at what he’s seeing, frustration at what he’s hearing, and the aching loss of something he never really had.

 

_Steve watches the statement with growing disbelief. “He is **not**.”_

“ _Oh, yes, he is,” says Wanda shortly. “He is Tony Stark.”_

“ _He’s doing what’s right.” Rhodey nods his head, approving Stark's idiocy._

“ _What he_ _ **thinks**_ _is right,” Sam notes and shrugs when he earns Rhodey’s sharp look._

_Steve sets his jaw as Stark declares that the Registration Act has his support – financial, technical, and political. “He’s wrong.”_

 

“ _Open your goddamn baby blues, Rogers. You don’t think she was targeted because of who she is? Because of what she means to us?”_

_His head jerks up. “Us?”_

“ _A friend,” Stark says, swift and slick. “An ally. A little voice to bring us down a peg and question us.”_

_Steve doesn’t comment. He can’t. “And now you’ll use her as a martyr?”_

“ _Why not? She’d have done the same to us.”_

 

“ _I’m not—Steve, we’re not kids anymore. This isn’t the war.”_

“ _I know.”_

_Bucky’s expression is steady, uncompromising. “Do you?”_

 

“ _There’s a part of you that’s missing, Steve. I suspect that Maria took it with her when she died.” Sharon shrugs without her usual grace, a sharp lift of slender shoulders. And Steve feels like the biggest cad ever._

“ _I didn’t mean—I wasn’t—“_

“ _No,” she agrees. “But I’m not going to share you with her memory, Steve.”_

 

* * *

 

He dreams of fire – the wash of heat over him, burning away his doubts and fears; this was the right thing to do.

 

_"The conquerers of Rome were given parades to welcome them home," Helen Cho tells him, “but in each parade, a slave stood behind the general, whose job it was to remind him that glory is fleeting and this, too, will pass.”_

“ _Stark’s the one seeking glory,” Steve retorts, stung._

“ _Really?” Implacable disappointment tinges the expression of the biogeneticist. “Because I cannot tell the difference from where I stand.”_

 

“ _You’re sure about this?” Bucky asks._

_No. No, he’s not. But the only other person who would have questioned him on this – personally, intimately, and without fear or favour – is gone._

_Steve sets his shoulders. “I have to be.”_

 

_Realisation is bitter: they’ve been played, every one of them._

_An inside job, once again._

“ _Change of plan,” Steve says over Stark’s string of curses as he realises what they’re facing. “Priority one, getting people out. Priority two, finding the bombs. Pick the one better suited to your skills and do it.”_

 

“ _Rogers, my readouts indicate you’re not moving out.”_

_Damn Stark and his tech. He’d hoped not to be noticed. “No,” he says, and ignores the cacophony of protest and alarm that rises up over the comms. “I’m looking after this. Get the civilians clear.”_

_One voice waits for the ruckus to quieten. Then, “Steve?”_

“ _End of the line,” he tells Bucky as the scarlet numbers on the clock scroll down, down, down..._

 

* * *

 

He dreams of fire.

He wakes in white.

Well, cream, really. A pale gauze curtain is hung over the bed in the old-fashioned room, shrouding the room from his gaze.

There’s a television playing a news segment somewhere nearby – near enough for him to make out the words, although the accent is odd – not quite British. “…while there are plenty of questions surrounding Barnes’ sudden reappearance after reportedly dying on a mission in World War II, few of them are being asked by the superhero community whose leadership Barnes has assumed since the factional war ended with the death of Steve Rogers.”

Fire burning his skin. Fire melting his flesh. Fire scraping his bones.

 _I was dead_.

He sits up in the bed, dragging away the gauze to look around at the room: wide windows leading out to a fenced garden, cream-patterned wallpaper, golden wood trim, furniture that’s seen better days.

It looks like a bedroom in a house – or what once was a house.

It’s not the kind of carefully crafted façade in which he woke after the ice, just a place that’s a little shabby, a little run down. The breeze blowing through the window is crisp and holds just a hint of dust and an odd, almost-leafy undertone – not quite oily or astringent, but a mix of both.

A distant door opens. A pair of heels clack their way along the wooden corridor, a crisp and unyielding tread that echoes in his memories.

He knows who it is even before the door opens.

“How?”

She tilts her head a little as she comes into the room, a neat shirt and working slacks, her hair cut short – clipped to cap her skull, framing her face. “There’s a thing Tony invented just after New York – Life Model Decoys.” A faint, flickering smile. “They’re occasionally useful.”

Steve is out of the bed and in front of her before she has time to do more than step back, startled. “You let me believe you were dead.” His hand pauses just over her shoulder, not quite touching her. If he brings his hand down and it’s not real—If it’s just something he’s made up in his head—

Her lashes sweep down and she steps into his arms.

Warm and slim and solid – _real_ – her arms close around him with slow care, and the sense of a sigh escapes her chest. And Steve sighs, too, pressing his cheek into her clipped hair and breathing deep of the scent of her skin, her hair. With her heart beating against his chest, he finally allows himself to believe. This is real. She’s real. They’re alive.

The relief of reality is short-lived; sudden anger blossoms inside him. “You let me believe you were dead.”

She pulls back, enough to look into his face with sober eyes. “You’re going to do the same, you know.”

He doesn’t answer her immediately. Instead, he brushes his hand along the clipped ends of her hair, savouring a moment of tenderness. “A new cut?”

“For a new start.”

The soldier in him comes to attention. “What now?”

Maria smiles, then – a swift and suddenly mischievous smile. And her mouth covers his – sweet and fierce and brisk and startling. “Come and see.”

She starts to turn, but he pulls her back. “Wait.” He cups his hand behind her head and pulls her in for another kiss – longer and deeper and more demanding. It’s fair, he thinks; this time she made the first move. And this time, if she thinks she’s going to get to retreat, she’s got another think coming to her.

When she finally pulls away, her lipstick is smudged all over her mouth – and his, if the thumb that swipes his lip is any indication.

“So, you were saying about a new start?” He forces himself to sound innocent.

Her eyes narrow, but she makes no comment. She also makes no protest when he catches her hand and enfolds it in his as they head out into the corridor of the house.

And it _is_ a house. Old – perhaps as old as Steve, even. It looks a little like the inside of the British houses he saw while working out of the War Office in London, but something in the style isn’t right. And it’s a _house_. “Where are we?”

“Australia,” she says, looking back over her shoulder at him. “One of the bits people don’t usually see.”

“Not quite what I was asking,” he says as she pushes open a door and steps into a compartment whose décor looks very _unlike_ the rest of the place – stainless steel and polished chrome.

“Facility Viewing Level,” she says as the door swings closed behind them.

“ _Commander Hill and Captain Rogers. Facility Viewing Level. Authorisations confirmed._ ”

It occurs to Steve that he’s not exactly formally dressed – a t-shirt, tracksuit bottoms, and bare feet. “Facility?”

The elevator dings and the doors slide open. “ _Facility,_ _Viewing Level._ ”

They step out onto a balcony looking out over a huge hangar where a Quinjet is being cleaned of mud and water, while a dozen Chitauri skimmers are parked in neat rows. People move briskly about – save for a blur that speeds swiftly through them, ruffling papers and hair as he goes. And across the room, a shaggy-haired man hunches over a little as he speaks with a man who wears a suit like he was born in one...

He looks at Maria. Maria looks back at him. And smiles. “Welcome to the Secret Avengers Project, Steve.”

 


End file.
